1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, there has been further acceleration in unitary management of document data, use of mobile personal computers (PC), and thin-client arrangement. Thus, in such a print environment, a printing data environment must be provided to a client PC without installing any printer driver. One of the problems caused by non-installation of any printer driver is that a user cannot identify an output printer during printing. Selection of a printer driver results in selection of a printer which outputs a print product. However, due to non-installation of any printer driver, the user cannot select a printer driver. No printer driver has accordingly been selected, causing the abovementioned problem.
As an example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-067157 discusses a technology which receives a print request from a client PC by a print server, selects an optimal printer on the print server side according to a print status, and outputs a print job.
As another example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-202723 discusses a technology which first stores a print job in a print server, and then transmits, when a user operates an operation panel of an output printer to access the print server and designate the print job, the print job from the print server to the printer to print data.
The technology discussed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-067157 has a problem in that the user has no idea about a physical location of an actually used printer while printing can be performed without identifying any output printer. In a mobile environment, when printing is performed at a business trip destination, the user cannot identify a printer which has performed print processing for the print job, losing a print product of the print job.
The technology discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-202723 always stores the print job first in the print server, and requires the user to go to the output printer, and designate a job of executing printing from the print server (hereinafter referred to as “pull-printing”). More specifically, the user starts printing at the output printer, and hence must wait there until the printing is over. Thus, this method is not suited to printing of a great volume since it takes much time. Even when there is always a fixed printer in a determined output destination, a print task is troublesome because the user must perform a pull-printing operation on the printer side for each printing.